


The Stars are not Wanted Now

by Venhedish



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Coda, Death Rituals, Episode Tag, First Kiss, Grieving Dean Winchester, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Post-Episode: s02e21 All Hell Breaks Loose, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29538318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venhedish/pseuds/Venhedish
Summary: There was a body on the bed.It had been there long enough that the slanting light of morning crept into the room like an unwelcome invader and washed the world in a dream-shade of palest blue.But there were no dreams here; only death, only memory. The body on the bed was all that remained of Samuel Winchester, who had died in his brother’s arms the night before.~A coda for All Hell Breaks Loose, Pt. 1.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 28
Collections: Every Time We Touch: A First-Time Wincest Fest





	The Stars are not Wanted Now

**Author's Note:**

> Title from W.H. Auden's, ["Funeral Blues."](https://medium.com/poem-of-the-day/w-h-auden-funeral-blues-8771e2868595)

There was a body on the bed.

It had been there long enough that the slanting light of morning crept into the room like an unwelcome invader and washed the world in a dream-shade of palest blue. 

But there were no dreams here; only death, only memory. The body on the bed was all that remained of Samuel Winchester, who had died in his brother’s arms the night before. 

If there were other bodies on other beds—in hospitals, in houses, in rainy little huts in distant jungles, or in sleeping bags on snowy mountaintops—they did not matter; Dean Winchester didn’t mourn them. If they could die again—every child in its crib, every tired old dog on the pillow by the fire—so that his brother might live in their stead, Dean would will it. He would kneel beside them all and drag their dying sighs deep into his lungs, collect them and bring them back to Sam, to his ruined body splayed across the stained mattress. And he would press a kiss of life against those still, cool lips, and say, _Thank you for dying. Thank you, thank you_ , as each and every breath he’d stolen passed from him to fill the lungs of the only body in the world that had ever mattered. 

There was a body on the bed, and Dean Winchester could never breathe it back to life. 

~ 

The rain had come down in sheets, the sky open and weeping for the dead boy kneeling in the mud. And Dean had wallowed there, cradling his little brother, a thick cake of grime on his boots, black stains at his knees. He’d been soaked to the bone, colder than he’d ever felt in his life. Bobby had gone somewhere, to kill a killer, and Sam was so _heavy_ against him. 

Sam had been a small kid until he wasn’t anymore, until he filled hallways and hit his head on doorframes. _Jeez, John, the kid grew up big_ , hunters who hadn’t seen them in a while would say. But Dean would shake his head in secret knowing; Sam had always been big—so massive that he was the only thing Dean could see sometimes, no matter where he looked. 

It wasn’t any different in the rain, on the muddy, frozen ground; his brother’s death hadn’t diminished him. Dean tried to get Sam up, to sit him straight, but he was stubborn as ever. Dean had begged, _C’mon Sammy, don’t. Okay, kid? Don't fight me on this, not now._ He’d gotten his arms around Sam everywhere he could, but his boots slipped in the wet when he tried to stand. And his hands, so sticky with blood— _baby’s blood_ , he kept thinking—slid against his brother’s jacket at every vain attempt to haul him up from the wet earth. 

Even when Bobby came, Sam resisted them, big shoulders slumping sideways with all his dead, ungainly weight. Bobby pulled him up by the armpits and his long legs spread out in the mud and dragged behind them. _I don’t want to go_ , they said. _Please don’t make me._

And if Bobby heard Dean say, _Careful, he’s only a baby_ , he didn’t mention it. 

~ 

Sam deserved sheets—clean ones, white and crisp—the sense-memory smell of laundry detergent, thick and warm and fresh from the dryer like the only snapshot of home Dean still held onto. But there were no sheets. There was only the damp mattress; only the dark, ruined house. 

And if this was all Sam got, Dean would do his best to make of it a blessed space; he'd find a way to sanctify the sagging rafters and the dark, lonesome corners. Bobby’s voice kept away the silence for a time as Dean worked, walking from wall to wall and touching them each in turn. He ran his hands over the footboard of the bed, the table in the vacant kitchen; he touched the cabinets and the chairs and the filthy, broken windows. _I am staking my claim here_ , his hands said, _I am making this place mine. Let my hands do what my words cannot. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned: my brother is dead and I did not protect him. Let me at least give him this_. 

Bobby had gone at some point, and Dean was glad for his absence. This would be a wake that no one but Dean could attend; only he could craft a eulogy of the silence that Sam might understand. 

But he could not begin, even as the dawn came up around him, because no matter the tears that had spilled against them in the night, the bloodstains on his hands remained. He would not touch his brother with unclean hands; he could not. The grimy sink was dry, but the pump outside sprang clear and sweet from the ground, and he scrubbed himself until the pink on his skin was not his brother’s blood but his own, hands raw and shining with his penance. 

He filled a bowl from the kitchen with clean water and brought it in. There were rags here, too, but they were sooty and gray with dust. His shirt, the one worn closest to his skin, was clean enough for this, so he removed it and tore it down to strips. 

He retrieved a rosary from the car with which to sanctify the water. He chanted the Latin by rote, impersonal and apathetic, invoking the God of his brother in a dead language he had never understood; they were not the words he would have chosen, but there was surety in the ritual of it, and it calmed him. 

After, he did choose his own words, halting and tender as if his throat had never uttered a single syllable before this moment. He whispered over the still, clear pool reflecting silver from the dull blue light of the outside world, and the words were simple, but they were his. 

_Let him be clean_ , they said.  
_Let me make him clean and whole_ , they said.  
_Please, god, allah, brahma, zeus—whoever you are—grant me this_. 

He left the bowl on the floor by the bed and removed Sam’s clothes, gentle as a new mother might prepare her child for a bath. He folded shirts and jeans and jacket by his brother’s feet until there were no more layers and Sam lay there stark and cold, pale skin smeared with grit and blood. 

And for the first time, Sam did look small, like a child, diminished by his nakedness. He reminded Dean again of a baby, of one swaddled in a pale blue blanket, smelling of smoke, and cradled in his arms as their home went up in flames behind his eyelids. 

Dean went to the bowl and wetted his shirt scraps. 

He began at Sam’s feet—so sturdy in life, long and slender and sure. His hands were careful, as steady as the beat of his heart. This was his gift: his hands, the work of them; it was all he had to offer, and he gave it freely. He was slow, his touch feather-soft as he made his brother’s skin gleam once more in the low light. 

He drew the cloth up Sam’s legs, bathed him with gentle strokes against his thighs, his groin. His tears were a balm at his brother’s stomach, coalescing with the water to wash away all the grime that had soaked in with the rain. 

He left the bed only to clean and refill the bowl, returning to bathe chest and shoulders and arms; cool palms and long, nerveless fingers. 

Dean whispered words of reassurance to his baby brother as, with such aching, tender reverence, he cleaned Sam’s beautiful, sleeping face. _It’s okay, Sammy. I’m here. I’ve got you_. His hands were apparitions against Sam’s skin, so soft he could barely imagine the touch, the way the pads of his calloused fingers swept over the fragile bones of his brother’s face: cheek and brow and chin; the feel of his features so similar to his own and so unfathomably different at once. 

He washed Sam’s hair with gentle hands, wringing the grit out with a devotion so complete it seemed to seep out like soul-vapor from inside his pores, behind his eyes, under his fingernails. He combed it slowly with his fingers, laid it flat, watched it shine honey-golden as it dried. 

He cried against his brother’s back, sobs wracking through both their bodies as his cheek pressed against the wound that stole the life from Sam, caked with the copper-brown of old violence. He took his time, brought new water when the bowl turned cloudy and dark, and smoothed his shirt-rag over that ugly, jagged line again and again until his brother’s skin was as clean and white as blank paper. For a desperate moment, Dean wanted to write his love across the wide expanse between Sam’s shoulders in his own blood. 

Instead, he dressed his brother in silence, leaving his feet bare, unable to stand the thought of returning them to the confines of his filthy socks. He rested Sam’s hands on top of each other, crawled onto the bed beside him, and then—his work done—fell asleep with his head notched into the right angle of Sam’s shoulder, breathing heat against the marble column of his neck. 

When he woke, the dark had returned, and he welcomed it. He stood, leaving behind feverish dreams of all the words he wished he’d had the time to say, screaming them into Sam’s dead ear in the rain. He lit a candle on the grubby table and sat in the old wooden chair. For a time, he simply looked, memorizing all he could. He knew that soon, Bobby would be back, that he would fill the silence once more with words Dean would never be ready to hear. 

So he went again to the bedside, sat heavy beside his brother, held Sam’s lifeless face in his hands, and whispered into his ear a desperate plea for the dead: _Wait for me, Sammy. Don’t you go somewhere I can’t reach._

He remembered an old myth their father used to tell them, and he wished that he'd had some coins to lay upon his brother’s eyes—to pay the ferryman—but his pockets were empty. Instead, he paid with the only currency he possessed. He kissed Sam's eyelids, making them heavy with the weight of his grief. He hoped it would be worth enough, though knew in his heart it wouldn't. 

Finally, with the ache of a man arriving at his own funeral, he took Sammy’s youthful, dreaming face in his hands and pressed a kiss against his silent mouth. He lingered against Sam’s skin, tears streaking both their cheeks. He kissed his brother firm and sweet because he would never get another chance, because he’d squandered all the chances that had come before. He kissed the body on the bed even though he knew it would not bring Sam back to him. 

There were headlights in the dark outside, the sound of tires spinning in the mud. Dean let Sam go, let his body rest alone once more on the worn and sunken mattress. He returned to his place on the chair, a lone sentry standing guard over some fragile, priceless artifact. He wiped his eyes with shaking fingers, brought them to rest gentle against his lips—lured away for just a moment into the beckoning fog of his loss—before he dropped his hands to his lap, dragged in a shaking breath, and steeled himself. Bobby stepped through the door, and the rest of the world came rushing back in with him. 

There was a body on the bed, but Dean Winchester was the ghost it left behind. 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Every Time We Touch: A First-Time Wincest Fest](https://first-time-wincest-fest.tumblr.com/), and lovingly looked over by [Kalutyka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalutyka), and [Raving_Liberal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal).


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